We are designing a new site for a new line of business. On our
product page the design teams wants to have a section of the page
where they use AJAX to display different text depending on which
section navigation the user clicks...
So basically, within this little subsection of the page there is a
mini-navigation (5 links each being a question). When you click on
one of the navigation links we want to use AJAX/CSS to show the answer
to the question (3-5 bulletted bits of info) but hide the answers to
the other 4 questions...
So I'm picturing the HTML for this section on the page looking
something similar to:
<div id=questionanswersection>
<div id=question1>
...answers to question 1...
</div>
<div id=question2>
...answers to question 2...
</div>
<div id=question3>
...answers to question 3...
</div>
<div id=question4>
...answers to question 4...
</div>
<div id=question5>
...answers to question 5...
</div>
</div>
Then in the css somehow they plan to do basically the following:
If they click on the link for question 1 then
show question1 div
hide question2 div
hide question3 div
hide question4 div
hide question5 div
end if
If they click on the link for question 2 then
hide question1 div
show question2 div
hide question3 div
hide question4 div
hide question5 div
end if
etc.
The end result is the same URL can show 5 different versions of the
page depending on which link is clicked. If you view/source you will
see the text from all 5 question/answer divs but in the browser you
will only be able to see one answer div at any given time.
We are not trying to hide keywords... All 5 versions of this section
of the screen can be displayed by the user if they click the
navigation links for that section of the page... But we are showing/
hiding divs clientside using AJAX/CSS so that we don't have to make a
round trip to the server or have 5 different pages/URLs for this
simple task.
Would Google frown on this or somehow think it is blackhat hidden
text? Microsoft even does it on their site... But then maybe they are
on the Google whitelist and can do whatever they like.
Simplest, safest and most accessible method is to have all the content
on the page.
Then apply CSS through JS to hide the irrelevant parts from view (no
different to tab block groups, clickable FAQs etc.).
So long as the default state is "open", there should be no problem, as
that is what the bots will see.
(Make sure that with JS disabled, all the content is visible. Apply
the closing/hiding with the JS.)
Hiding/Cloaking shouldn't be an issue, as yo uare not serving
different content, merely restricting the visitors view.
Thanks... Yea we honestly are not trying to do anything blackhat
here. Just attempting to make the most of the above the fold screen
real estate by reusing a section of the page to display answers for
multiple commonly asked questions.
If you don't have time to read that, here's the brief, one-sentence
summary: If your text is temporarily "hidden" as part of your site's
UI but is still intended for the user to see at some point, you
probably don't need to worry about Google mistakenly viewing it as
deceptive.
From what you've described, your implementation sounds like a common
design that is focused on usability, and should fall well within our
Webmaster Guidelines. Cheers to Autocrat for the suggestions; making
sure your site is functional without JavaScript enabled is great for
both search engines and users!
> Thanks... Yea we honestly are not trying to do anything blackhat
> here. Just attempting to make the most of the above the fold screen
> real estate by reusing a section of the page to display answers for
> multiple commonly asked questions.
This is an interesting topic- has anyone weighed in on replacing H1
text with images? There a a couple of sites I work on where this is
the case; The H1 tag encloses text which is, in this example, the
Company name- then, the text is replaced by an image using css ...
Since the image is in effect creating a 'nicer' display of the very
text within the H1, it wouldn't seem to violate the guidelines. Still
though, I wonder if this could have a negative consequence. Any
thoughts?
> If you don't have time to read that, here's the brief, one-sentence
> summary: If your text is temporarily "hidden" as part of your site's
> UI but is still intended for the user to see at some point, you
> probably don't need to worry about Google mistakenly viewing it as
> deceptive.
> From what you've described, your implementation sounds like a common
> design that is focused on usability, and should fall well within our
> Webmaster Guidelines. Cheers to Autocrat for the suggestions; making
> sure your site is functional without JavaScript enabled is great for
> both search engines and users!
> - Wysz
> On Feb 19, 11:34 am, ZydoSEO wrote:
> > Thanks... Yea we honestly are not trying to do anything blackhat
> > here. Just attempting to make the most of the above the fold screen
> > real estate by reusing a section of the page to display answers for
> > multiple commonly asked questions.
